Podcast 537: Psychedelics, Consciousness & Healing Religious Wounds

MICHELA: My goal is to help those who have those religious wounds or even spiritual wounds to see the value in investing in this area of life for themselves.

MARTIN: Hi everyone, this is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Health Shots podcast, and I have with me today Michela Giordano Castro and she has a story that I think is worth hearing. So let's dive into it. Welcome Michela.

MICHELA: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

MARTIN: Yeah. Good to be in your presence. Let's dive in. You said spirituality is an important thing. Why and how?

MICHELA: Yeah. For me, for 10 years, I did not not see value in spirituality. And looking back, I recognized that it was because I was emotionally wounded. I grew up very, I would say, spiritual and religious. It wasn't just about following the rules for me within my religion, but I had the relationship with God as they say. And when that fell apart for me and I lost and left religion, I didn't want to dabble with spirituality at all because I felt like, well we can't know, so why bother? And there was the fear of getting hurt and being wrong or being tricked, and all of that. So I was very focused on having a great life without spirituality being involved and I pursued my license to practice therapy, and I achieved that, and I worked on my mental health, and all these things, and life was definitely good. But over time, spirituality became a part of my life again without me even really, really seeking it. After maybe about eight years, things had softened to the point where I was more curious but no dire interest for spirituality. But now that I have become a spiritual person again and have done research into the benefits around it, I see how valuable it is, and my goal is to help those who have those religious wounds or even spiritual wounds to see the value in investing in this area of life for themselves.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, for me, I'm quite convinced that the search for transcendence, the search for meaning, the search for believing or knowing that there's something more to our existence than just lights on, when we're born, lights out when we die. And there's plenty of evidence, at least in my world, that we are more than just a flesh bag. I see myself as a spiritual entity that's wearing this physical body, as a means of interacting with the physical world, but my non-physical existence is fine and well. Does that meet with your findings now?

MICHELA: Yes, it does. I feel the same way. I personally think that however the world came about has left us in this situation where, with the willingness and openness to consider spirituality, the evidence is there. But for someone who is just kind of stuck on feeling the need for 100% without a doubt, physical in your face, absolute proof that it's never going to happen. But in regards to just looking at data and putting two and two together, I think it's very easy actually if you get access to the right information to come to this conclusion, like you said, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And for me, who lived for 10 years without that kind of mindset and again looking at the research into how spirituality impacts humans. There is a big shift in quality of life in management of challenges when we adopt that mindset and that view of life, the spiritual one. And so yeah, that's part of my interest in and coming on podcasts such as yours, is just encouraging people to consider that.

MARTIN: And so is your pursuit mostly emotional, intellectual, or have you tried some shamanic methods too, or how have you gone about it?

MICHELA: Yeah. So for me, honestly, initially what started to spark my curiosity were some docu-series on Netflix, actually, and this was years ago, but I saw one called “How to Change Your Mind” and it's a Harvard professor that shares his research into how psychedelics impact the brain, how they positively impact mental health. And that was very interesting to me as a therapist. In one of the episodes, they talked about how many people actually have the most spiritual experience of their lives on a psychedelic. And of course, this is all controlled usage with people there to help the people through the process and all of that. But,

MARTIN: Just to butt in, within the United States, we have this crazy regulatory system where since the 1970s, anything and everything that could help people evolve psychically, psychologically, spiritually has been put on “Schedule One”, which is, no medical use, only destructive.

MICHELA: And they talked about that.

MARTIN: By the way, you just mentioned and I think it would be worth stopping on that here now, is that you went to school about all of this, right?

MICHELA: Yeah. I've studied social work in both my undergrad and my master's degree, and so I have my license to practice therapy. I'm a clinical social worker.

MARTIN: Right. So when that gets going in practical terms, you are helping people come to terms with their existence, right?

MICHELA: Yeah. I actually have a certification to also help people use ketamine in their therapy, which is more of the kind of man-made psychedelic. That's the closest we can get here in Texas right now. But there are many steps being taken to do away with what you described and begin to legalize these drugs that actually really benefit people.

MARTIN: Yeah, I just recently heard Joe Rogan talk about Ibogaine and also talk about psilocybin, both of which are phenomenally helpful. Ibogaine is now known to help people get rid of addictions to all kinds of substances, primarily heroin or what are they call the Vicodin, OxyContin, I guess these are the human-made morphine type of things?

And then there is the big one, the mother herb the Ayahuasca or DMT, which is currently still off limits but many, many people have been taking journeys out into countries where it's legal and doing it there.

MICHELA: Yeah. And this docu-series really explored usage in other countries and also the history of making them illegal, and what was seen and benefited from them before the demonization and the making these drugs illegal. But that started to get me very curious because these people are using psychedelics, a plant in many cases, and having spiritual experiences, and my prior exposure to religion and spirituality was, people tell you, “Think this way, believe this way.” And you might have an experience when you're around a lot of people and some music or this kind of stuff. Learning that people would have experiences ingesting a plant was really, really fascinating to me, and got me started to wonder, okay, maybe there's something more to this spirituality stuff than just being a program that some people receive. And then I later saw another docu-series called “Surviving Death.” And some of the episodes were kind of weird, but some of them were very interesting in people sharing their experiences after dying and then coming back to life through medical means or sometimes even just miraculous means and sharing their experiences.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MICHELA: And those were some factors, but eventually I did as part of my training, take psychedelics myself, do the ketamine, and I did have experiences of “All Is One,” which was pretty foreign to me. I grew up very Christian. That's not really anything taught and I'm sure I had heard it before but I know I was not leaning towards that mindset at all believing that, thinking that. But it felt so obviously true to me, so that was another influence as well. Ultimately it was more just this… Even then I was like, I'm a spiritual person now, I'm on board with all of this. It was still like, oh I don't know, figuring it out. But I think it's just over time, I say that God, and God I use broadly, God just helped me have what I needed to believe again. It's nothing super obvious or clear on paper for that would work for any individual person, but for me, I got to the point where, ”Alright, I am totally on board. I believe that there is more to life than just material and my life has really transformed since then, even though it was already going pretty well.”

MARTIN: Okay. Well, talk about that. How is it different for you to be now? Well, you mentioned it, we are all one. It's all one big unified consciousness. We are part of it, and we are contributing to it, and we're helping it evolve, and it's using us as its senses and tentacles to interact with the three-dimensional reality as we know it. Right? Is that that, do you feel yourself belonging to a greater body, something greater than yourself?

MICHELA: Yeah, I do. And it's been so amazing to learn just how universal this belief is and this concept is, not in the sense of every single person, but I was actually even just listening to a book that was talking about how, I think like 30% of people have some kind of experience of all is one, some kind of moment where it just resonates with them. And for me, when I first learned that, again, that wasn't my big shift into claiming spirituality and finding comfort in it, but it did open me up more to it because again, there's this belief that is very spiritual. To believe that all is one is so in contrast to our survivalist, individualist way of doing life. We just have to survive, take care of ourselves, all of that. Whereas, if we're, if all is one, then there's so much more ease and openness in connecting to others in feeling led to be generous, which I never really even had problems with either of those before, but it just opens the mind, I think, to just how mysterious life is because in our experience day to day, it doesn't seem like all is one. But one thing I think about is my body as Michela. So, if my cells had consciousness, they might say I'm an individual. I'm a cell. But they all make up Michela. And I think that's kind of similar to what's going on for us, seeming like we're individuals but ultimately being part of a bigger picture.

MARTIN: Yeah. There’s this beautiful metaphor, was this raindrop falling from the sky into a puddle that's going to turn into a creek that's going to turn into a river that's going to flow into the ocean. Is the drop of water still individual, or is it just part of a larger entity?

MICHELA: Yeah. Or even like waves of the ocean, so yeah, that has been significant. But for me, it was also shifting my mindset from "I'm just in control of making my life better and surviving" “try to get what I want and what I need” to "okay, there's this bigger picture." It's not all about just survival, and I'm not on my own, figuring all of this out. There are forces at play that I can turn to, and that's been so amazing for me to even just learn about in research, that for those who have this… Technically in research, it's considered great, I want to say great value for spirituality. It has an impact on the brain itself. We see that those with this great value towards spirituality have a thicker prefrontal cortex, and that translates into less depression, less risk of depression. And we also just see this over generations and surveys taken and data collected that spirituality does lead to a way lower risk of suicide, of risky behaviors, of addiction, of depression.

MARTIN: Right.

MICHELA: So that was really amazing, too. And something that also struck out to me as someone who grew up with a lot of fundamentalist religion and went to a very strict university and undergrad. I saw in the research that this spirituality is not religion. Now, some religious people can have spirituality as well, but it's not the same thing. You could have what they call personal conservatism, being like I believe in this way, and I follow these rules, and yada yada, that doesn't lead to these benefits. If that person also has this personal devotion to spirituality, where they lean into it, and they turn to it often when they're in trouble, but also when they're not. And it's not just for show and all that. Religious people can also experience these benefits, but people with no tie to religion at all can also experience these benefits, and that's proven.

MARTIN: What you're describing is a difference between a ritual and transcendence. A ritual could be as simple as brushing your teeth every morning, or praying or doing the rosary, or going to church, or doing the mass on Easter, or whatever it is; those are all rituals. And they are probably an attempt to reach the transcendence, but the transcendence is reachable with or without the rituals.

MICHELA: Mhm. Yeah.

MARTIN: I think a really interesting point you made was that there is evidence in the physical world to the fact that once you reach this transcendence, this understanding that you as an entity are part of something much greater than what meets the world or what meets the eye here, that it actually leaves physical evidence behind that you are a different person.

MICHELA: Yeah, I found that really amazing as well.

MARTIN: Indeed. Well, I wanted to just add to that, which is that our brain makes DMT dimethyltryptamine, that's a substance that is in fact the expression of our connection to the higher self. And so it's made naturally, but we can of course dose it. We can bring it in a greater amount. Ayahuasca is a common way of doing it, but it can be chemically isolated. It's been done. People can take a hit of DMT. The trip is usually quite short 5 to 10 minutes, but it is usually transformative, life-changing. For myself, in my 20s I picked up a book about yoga and started reading, and it was mostly breathwork - pranayama, and I started working it, and wouldn't you know it? I gave myself transcendent experiences through breathwork.

MICHELA: Oh, wow I'd love to hear about that.

MARTIN: Well, it's out there. You can pursue it. You can find it. It's curious because it's a 5,000 year old tradition in India, and they're doing less of it now than they used to. They are turning to the industrial modern age Hollywood way of seeing the world. Instead of staying with their transcendent ways.

MARTIN: But the body of work and the body of knowledge exists and can be accessed. Anyway, it was hugely transformative for me specifically what you are describing, which is just becoming fully aware of the fact that I am a part of a much larger thing, an entity and the oneness with it all. And the biggest change in me was that I lost my fear of transcending or transmuting or leaving this. I'm no longer afraid to ‘so-called meet my maker’ or join in with where I came from. No problem. I'm not worried. I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy to do my work here, and I do that with full effort, but I'm totally unworried about what happens when it's over.

MICHELA: Yeah. I relate to that. I mean, for me, everyone's journey is different, but when I was religious, I didn't fear death. When I wasn't religious or spiritual, I didn't think about it. I didn't want to think about it. It was more like, it's going to happen when it happens and what happens after is going to be whatever it is, and I'm just not going to worry about it.

MARTIN: All right.

MICHELA: But in my day-to-day life, I would experience a lot of fear of, again, of not getting what I wanted or needed and feeling the need to control. For me, what has been so liberating is letting go of that control and having more trust and surrender. And what happens happens. It doesn't mean I don't still pursue what I feel led to pursue. But it's with less of that tight grip on expecting an outcome or needing it to have a certain outcome. There's more trust and fluidity in how I live my life, which has been so freeing.

MARTIN: Yeah. Especially, well, I would say this, the sooner or the earlier in your life you come to this, the greater the remaining years will be, right? Some people only meet this on their deathbed. Some transitions are full of fear. Some transitions are full of love. But wouldn't it be good to have this understanding early on so you can actually live your life in appreciation of every day as it comes, right?

MARTIN: That's what I hear you describe to me is that you are now living in peace with yourself and with your interactions with the world.

MICHELA: Way, way more. Again, being a therapist there's knowledge of the brain, and there is this reality that the brain takes the path most traveled, so even when we learn new things and make new decisions for ourselves, old patterns can still arise, but building our awareness to notice that and redirect. And now I have that option to redirect with this new worldview, this new understanding of the world and reality, which does lead to so much more of that peace.

MARTIN: So, how do you share it with the world?

MICHELA: Yeah. So I create content on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube in order to really share my story around, feeling like it was all or nothing. And it's something I see a lot. I'm not sure how much of your audience has a history with religion. But the reality is that, I'm quoting an article here from Pew Research that Christianity is in rapid decline. It is dissolving in our society slowly but surely or even rapidly in the grand scheme of things. So, people are turning away from religion. And so many people don't know what to do with that. On Facebook, there are so many groups around what's called deconstruction, which is a word people use for figuring out religion and breaking it down and realizing it's not all that meets the eye. Sometimes people deconstruct and remain Christian, but they just have their own beliefs around it and are not strictly following doctrine. But many people fall away from religion entirely, but also spirituality.

There's this pendulum of going from really religious to fundamentalist as an atheist. I just see so much of that online that I want to help people jump ahead from what I experienced, which was 10 years of that kind of living. Of spiritual disinterest and avoidance by knowing or just kind of sharing my story, that it doesn't have to be that way. And also just sharing what I learned around spirituality and what can help us build an authentic spirituality. So many people are used to being told what to do to be spiritual, what to believe, we're following one particular book, and so without that, some people feel really lost, and I'm just trying to help people see some other options.

MARTIN: Good. Okay. So for the people who feel disconnected by or from the rigid spiritual practices, they will probably find solace and inspiration in your writings because after all, once you overcome the structured part, you still will end up facing the transcendence.

MICHELA: Yeah, that's my hope, you know?

MARTIN: That's the unchanging part, really, right? The transcendence is what we share with one another. Regardless of whether you grew up, I don't know, Catholic or Protestant or Jewish, or Muslim, or I don't know what, Buddhist and Shintoist. There are so many ways of trying to describe reality, and those are just ways of trying to describe reality. These are the windows or doors to greater understanding.

MICHELA: Yeah, I completely agree. And again, for people leaving religion, it's just so often that I see, again, what I experienced too, which is throwing out the baby with the bath water, they throw out spirituality in entirety. And I didn't have that example of someone who wasn't religious but was also still open to the divine and the spiritual and transcendence and a lot of people just get focused and set on what they know for sure and what they can control and it's based on fear. And so that's another thing, for me as a therapist this work is also trying to help people learn how to heal those emotional wounds from religion, from losing religion, so that they can be more open to exploring their spirituality and finding a way that works for them and improves their lives.

MARTIN: Yeah. Monistic Pantheism. Have you heard those words?

MICHELA: I've heard pantheism. What's Monistic pantheism?

MARTIN: Pantheism is God is in everything and everywhere. And monistic is there's only one of it.

It's the rule of one or the law of one or that there is only one greater consciousness for all of us. We are part of it and it permeates everything.

MICHELA: Yeah. I think I've seen something about that like a visual of that where there is for some, God is material, you could say.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MICHELA: But then beyond that, God is in the material you could say, but also beyond it as well. And I think that might be what you're referring to.

MARTIN: Well yeah, the entire creation, whether it's rocks, plants, slugs, humans and who knows, angels, the non-material beings. We soon are going to be meeting the extraterrestrials who show up. We already hear about them. This is the latest buzz. They have been coming. They're around and they're not necessarily physical in the same form as we are. We'll be learning all kinds of new things. It's coming to us at a fairly high speed.

MICHELA: Actually, I’m a little bit excited to talk about this because I don't often, but that was actually another thing that helped me return to spirituality, was my dad had shown me this video. So my dad is from Sicily and moved here in his 20’s and we go back often and visit family and whatnot. And I mean it's well known that America is very interested in UFOs and that kind of thing. They say the most sightings are in America and all of this. But It's not a huge topic of discussion in my experience in Italy, but he showed me this interview of this man. It was his 100th birthday and he was being interviewed. He was a successful artist and retired, of course, and all of that. He lived on Lake Como, this beautiful place. And so in like material social standards a respectable old man. And this interview involved him sharing his experience with extraterrestrials that he had interacted with in the 50’s. Just the way he described them, this is just my mind narrative as I'm watching all of this. He’s speaking in Italian. This isn't for American consumption, making money in and all that. It's just a man sharing his story. And the way he described them, the love that they conveyed, it just seemed so clearly beyond us and evolved and not something that somebody would just kind of make up. They also had some evidence as well of pictures that they took, which at the time back then would not be easy to just fake. And so that was another thing that expanded my mind to, yeah, there's more than meets the eye. And I'm interested in learning more about these things and being part of this way of living with more love, which is what these extraterrestrials were trying to teach them.

MARTIN: Yes. The lesson will be to learn to coexist. Yeah. We're part of the same tribe. So even the people you disagree with or even the people you think are wrong are still on the same boat.

MICHELA: Yeah, we still need to have love for them. And I've also heard theories around. Actually in this guy's interview, if I remember correctly, he said that they had shared with him that they wouldn't be able to come pretty soon anymore because the love in the world was declining. And so we need more love and to raise our vibration for more of these other beings to be able to share with us and to be here and those kinds of things.

MARTIN: Yeah, wouldn't it be interesting that their presence would be dependent on the positive vibration of love, much the same way as we depend on oxygen. Right? If there's not enough oxygen, we suffocate. And what if it were that for them to be able to be here is the necessary vibration of higher consciousness of being able to get along with one another.

MICHELA: Yeah, it's fascinating. I feel like it's very possible, likely even.

MARTIN: There we go. And we have this written into the Christian doctrine as the second coming.

MARTIN: And it's not happening until we are willing and able to live in love with one another instead of trying to murder one another.

MICHELA: Mhmm. Yeah. And honestly, that's another motivator for me with with my stuff because I used to be very very sure of myself as a Christian and very sure of the idea and the belief that this was good and this was love and so I had that understanding and that love for those in that boat who really want that and believe that. But with the perspective I have now, there are people who claim Christianity who don't follow rigid doctrine and I think those people can be super loving but for those who feel like the Bible is the word of God and it has to be followed, it's just natural that that loving vibration is not the result all of the time. Sometimes not even most of the time. And so, honestly, on some level, I want to help the people who are doubting with one foot out to feel safe to leave so that there can be more love, more acceptance, more getting along with others. In fact, when I was being taught in a homeschooled co-op, they would mock the coexist bumper stick that people would put around.

MARTIN: Yeah. the Darwin thingy.

MICHELA: Well, I don't remember if that's part of,

MARTIN: That's the mocking tool. The coexist had all the religious symbols in it, right? And there was another bumper sticker that had the word Darwin in it and it was in the shape of the Christian fish.

MICHELA: Yeah, I remember seeing that one, too.

MARTIN: That was the mocking.

MICHELA: Yeah. Yeah. And the coexist one, honestly, it's such a beautiful sentiment. And I remember even believing that at the time, but it was taught to me that that's actually bad. It's bad and it's wrong because for one, they were looking at the logistics of, this is impossible because your religion says to kill them and your religion says they're going to hell and all those technicalities. And also because ultimately the teaching was there's only one way. Everything else is wrong. Everything else is turning you away from God and so it's bad. And so ultimately Christianity in that sense cannot be this loving vibration. It's actually bringing us down. And I want to again, help people feel safe to leave that without turning to total atheism or fear of spirituality like I experienced.

MARTIN: Yeah. Take some psychedelics and get over yourself.

MICHELA: Yes, if only.

MARTIN: Well, no truly, you can understand it, right? Like when you're writing the book, you're trying to create an exclusive tribe. You're trying to say we are the best and everybody else is wrong because that's a movement. It tries to preserve itself.

MICHELA: Yeah,

MARTIN: That's what's perhaps wrong with it, right? Every one of those has written in it elements that say: “We're right. You're wrong.”

MARTIN: The truth is there's some universal truths in all of them. And every time you are operating from fear and exclusion, you're not doing it right.

MICHELA: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, awesome. So, you will be helping people get to a good place through the work. So, let's just name some. So, I'm looking at Facebook. I guess we will post it Lydia Michela.

MICHELA: Yeah, it's facebook.com/LydiaMichela. Michela Giordano Castro. That's my name on Instagram as well. And then on Tik Tok and YouTube, it's Michela’'s Mind Munchies. Just inspired from just my enjoyment of thinking about these things and wanting to start to share them.

MARTIN: That's good. I see you sharing all kinds of thoughtful ideas and inspiration and I think it's a wonderful thing. I think the more we get people to understand the bigger picture, the less friction we'll have here in this world, the physical.

MARTIN: So, I think we're on a good track, especially with people like you.

MICHELA: Yes. Thank you so much. I agree. And so beyond, the content I create. Again, I'm a therapist licensed in Texas, but I also offer coaching services. For those who just want some extra support as they're navigating these things because some people really do have a lot of grief and pain around leaving religion. It's their whole life, their whole community. And I've been there and I just want to support people on that journey.

MARTIN: Indeed, it can be super traumatic because we humans are team players. We are tribal creatures. We want to belong to something. Well, the message is we're on team God, all of us.

MICHELA: It's true. It's a comfort.

MARTIN: All right. Great. Well, thank you, Michela. We'll put the links into the show notes here. And it's a delight to meet you and I feel hopeful toward the next generation because we need to pick it up and run with it and save the world.

MICHELA: Thank you so much, sir. It's been so great to be here with you today and have these conversations.

MARTIN: All right. Thank you. This has been Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Health Shots, life-enthusiast.com. Thank you.